Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Daniel Koć]

W dniu 12.09.2019 o 07:02, Roland Olbricht pisze:
> > Changing to a github-like system of version management
>
> I thought of Git, not Github.
>
> This is an important distinction: Git is as decentralized as possible -
> whenever one works with a repo one gets the full data and history of the
> project to the local disk drive.


There is also GitHub-like service called Gitlab (with Community Edition
on a free license to be deployed on your own server), which is quite
popular option for managing Git projects, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitLab


Since we talk here about iD editor design choices, I also wanted to
mention OSM Carto (default map style which I'm involved in) as one of
the important tools related to tagging. There are no simple relations
between tagging and rendering department, for example lack of rendering
some objects does not stop people from tagging them, but it certainly
influences their choices in some way.

Our team is pretty conservative in that regard - not only tagging has to
be documented on wiki and the numbers should be substantial, but if
there is one scheme, there's a resistance to deploy any other scheme
which would duplicate it, which hinders the usage of any redesigned
schemes (public transport comes to mind for example). Over the time the
problem of scheme transitions will certainly go higher, so it's good to
think about how should it be handled by rendering.


BTW: Is there a chance to record and publish the discussion on the web?
Currently it looks like it won't be recorded, but even unofficial
recording done by participants would be interesting to me:

https://2019.stateofthemap.org/sessions/PPTHFQ/


-- 

"Pojechałam truizmem, ale mogę, bo jestem trochę pierdołą" [P. Potocka]



___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Mikel Maron]

Fascinating discussion, thanks for all participating. The tension between an 
open community and standards of practice has always been the key dynamic of OSM.
What I think has changed as OSM has grown and accreted code, data, and culture 
is ..  less opportunity to just do it. Like many things in those days, Map 
Features page came about at the initiative of one person (Andy Robinson 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2005-November/000450.html), with 
close consultation within a relatively small community.
The closest I think we can get in 2019 is (as has been suggested?) asking a 
smaller group to dig into the topic, come up with guidelines, recommendations, 
a plan, to share for further discussion with the broader community. This is 
essentially the model of OSMF working groups -- and I think a working group 
looking particularly at tagging could be a good idea, but also understand that 
not everyone thinks this should be under the umbrella as an official org. If 
the idea of a smaller group seems sensible, then the particulars of how to 
bring it together is something else we can talk about.

Mikel

p.s. Getting off topic but did want to respond to Christoph's assertion
> There are no  interface specifications and unit tests in text writing. 

Interestingly, I have seen this work well. It's possible to define some writing 
standards in code, and run unit tests on them, to maintain consistency of 
structure and terminology. For a simple example, we once had tests for the 
Mapbox blog (published in markdown) to warn about usage of the "OSM" 
abbreviation (preference was to fully spell out OpenStreetMap).
On Thursday, September 12, 2019, 7:59 AM, Christoph Hormann  
wrote:

On Thursday 12 September 2019, Roland Olbricht wrote:
> Thus the question is: are contradictions between pages a problem? If
> yes then a holisitic toolset may do better, if not then the holistic
> tool has no advantage in this regard.

Yes they are but it is unrealistic in practical work on any text 
document of considerable size to keep it contradiction free at all 
times.

For writing any larger body of text collaboratively you will need to 
compartmentalize to some extent and have different people focus on 
different parts of the whole thing and coordination between those will 
need to happen through human evaluation and human communication.

Being able to keep an eye on the whole while working on the details is 
one of the core qualifications necessary for this.  There are no 
interface specifications and unit tests in text writing.  There is also 
usually a significant benefit in terms of clarity and readability of 
text if there is clear individual authorship on the level of individul 
sections or chapters.  If you mix different styles of writing on a too 
fine grained level that often has a negative effect on text quality.

As Frederik said the idea to approach this with "Lets use technology X 
in combination with technology Y and everything else is going to fall 
into place" is not going to work.

The real hurdle here is to set up an editorial baseline of guiding 
principles and goals and find qualified people willing to contribute to 
such a project under these principles in the long term.  And this is 
not something you can bootstrap from open community discourse and 
consensus because then it would be no different from what we already 
have on the wiki with all the cacophony of different contradicting 
interests and opinions.

Therefore this idea of a curated body of tagging documentation can only 
be a contribution to open community discourse and governance on 
tagging, it cannot be the result of it.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk



___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Valor Naram via talk]

> For writing any larger body of text collaboratively you will need to > compartmentalize to some extent and have different-people focus on > different parts of the whole thing and coordination between those will > need to happen through human evaluation and human communication.+10 Original Message Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging GovernanceFrom: Christoph Hormann To: talk@openstreetmap.orgCC: On Thursday 12 September 2019, Roland Olbricht wrote:> Thus the question is: are contradictions between pages a problem? If> yes then a holisitic toolset may do better, if not then the holistic> tool has no advantage in this regard.Yes they are but it is unrealistic in practical work on any text document of considerable size to keep it contradiction free at all times.For writing any larger body of text collaboratively you will need to compartmentalize to some extent and have different people focus on different parts of the whole thing and coordination between those will need to happen through human evaluation and human communication.Being able to keep an eye on the whole while working on the details is one of the core qualifications necessary for this.  There are no interface specifications and unit tests in text writing.  There is also usually a significant benefit in terms of clarity and readability of text if there is clear individual authorship on the level of individul sections or chapters.  If you mix different styles of writing on a too fine grained level that often has a negative effect on text quality.As Frederik said the idea to approach this with "Lets use technology X in combination with technology Y and everything else is going to fall into place" is not going to work.The real hurdle here is to set up an editorial baseline of guiding principles and goals and find qualified people willing to contribute to such a project under these principles in the long term.  And this is not something you can bootstrap from open community discourse and consensus because then it would be no different from what we already have on the wiki with all the cacophony of different contradicting interests and opinions.Therefore this idea of a curated body of tagging documentation can only be a contribution to open community discourse and governance on tagging, it cannot be the result of it.-- Christoph Hormannhttp://www.imagico.de/___talk mailing listtalk@openstreetmap.orghttps://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 12 September 2019, Roland Olbricht wrote:
> Thus the question is: are contradictions between pages a problem? If
> yes then a holisitic toolset may do better, if not then the holistic
> tool has no advantage in this regard.

Yes they are but it is unrealistic in practical work on any text 
document of considerable size to keep it contradiction free at all 
times.

For writing any larger body of text collaboratively you will need to 
compartmentalize to some extent and have different people focus on 
different parts of the whole thing and coordination between those will 
need to happen through human evaluation and human communication.

Being able to keep an eye on the whole while working on the details is 
one of the core qualifications necessary for this.  There are no 
interface specifications and unit tests in text writing.  There is also 
usually a significant benefit in terms of clarity and readability of 
text if there is clear individual authorship on the level of individul 
sections or chapters.  If you mix different styles of writing on a too 
fine grained level that often has a negative effect on text quality.

As Frederik said the idea to approach this with "Lets use technology X 
in combination with technology Y and everything else is going to fall 
into place" is not going to work.

The real hurdle here is to set up an editorial baseline of guiding 
principles and goals and find qualified people willing to contribute to 
such a project under these principles in the long term.  And this is 
not something you can bootstrap from open community discourse and 
consensus because then it would be no different from what we already 
have on the wiki with all the cacophony of different contradicting 
interests and opinions.

Therefore this idea of a curated body of tagging documentation can only 
be a contribution to open community discourse and governance on 
tagging, it cannot be the result of it.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 12.09.19 07:02, Roland Olbricht wrote:
>> Changing to a github-like system of version management
> 
> I thought of Git, not Github.

Something I have witnessed in the context of
maybe-making-our-book-into-an-open-source-project is that the first
thing people try to tackle is technology, and inevitably because
collaborative authoring is difficult, the land with something like
"let's use a markup language like asciidoc, markdown, or TeX and
underpin this with a version control like git, and everything is going
to be great."

Except that this often excludes everyone who can write and is *not* a
computer programmer. It think this is what Christoph hinted at when he
wrote:

> Is there any mature and writer centric software that implements this 
> kind of model?  I mean that from the perspective of a documentation 
> author offers a wiki like functionality with decent preview and 
> formatting but at the same time comes with a kind of version management 
> and functions to facilitate editorial review and discussion.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Richard Fairhurst]

Roland Olbricht wrote:
> > Changing to a github-like system of version management
> I thought of Git, not Github.

Again, there's no suggestion of "changing to"; it would be additional.

As Christoph says, the challenge would be "finding, motivating, selecting
and retaining qualified people to work on this". The choice of
technology/platform for such a project would be down to those people and
what they find comfortable.

Richard



--
Sent from: http://gis.19327.n8.nabble.com/General-Discussion-f5171242.html

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Roland Olbricht]

Hello everybody,

first of all, I am grateful that the responses have all been calm and
well-thought. I will make room in the session to document the results of
this discussion.


Changing to a github-like system of version management


I thought of Git, not Github.

This is an important distinction: Git is as decentralized as possible -
whenever one works with a repo one gets the full data and history of the
project to the local disk drive.

The point about Git is that it groups related changes over multiple
files in a single structure called commit. This is opposed to the
Mediawiki approach which keeps changes to files in strict isolation.
Thus the question is: are contradictions between pages a problem? If yes
then a holisitic toolset may do better, if not then the holistic tool
has no advantage in this regard.

Opposed to this, Github is a profit oriented company essentially
offering web storage in a fancy way. Relying on Github or similar for
crucial ressources of OpenStreetMap is a no-no: Even if Github's geniune
business interests do not conflict with our needs, politics come into
play. Github had been targeted by 3rd country internet censoring, US
export restrictions, frivolous and substantial takedown requests, and
probably more. For the same reason I consider the silent integration of
Wikimedia resources into our Wiki for problematic: the last outage is
only a couple of days away, and has been neither to blame on Wikimedia
nor under their control. Yet it affected the usability of our Wiki.

Best regards,

Roland

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Mateusz Konieczny]

11 Sep 2019, 20:47 by o...@imagico.de:

> if the number of edits 
> and the time spent on these by those willing and able to diligently 
> pursue this path outnumbered edits of those who pursue other goals by a 
> fair margin.  This is not achievable i think.
>
It is not so bad.

Note that reverting is significantly
less time confusing than writing things.

More than once I needed less than minute
to spot and remove "hereby I redefine tag xyz"edit that needed far more time to 
write.
it is hard to say how far away we are from
this goal, especially for me, as part of wiki that 
I edit or at least monitor seem acceptable to me
because I already removed what I considered
as untrue/misguided/unwanted.
> And even if that worked it would still not produce the compact, well 
> condensed kind of documentation Richard has in mind of course.
>
Here I agree.
> Wikipedia has been experimenting with a system of this kind imposed on 
> top of the Mediawiki framework - but practically this is AFAIK used for 
> technocratic oversight to avoid vandalism and other clearly malicious 
> changes but not for editorial review regarding content quality:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reviewing_pending_changes
>
> I have not actually tried the technical implementation of this but given 
> how it is used i doubt it would be suitable for the kind of content 
> centered editorial review we are talking about here.
>
given that only choices are 
- accept
- revert

it is suitable only for combating
blatant vandalism.

Some way to discuss changes
would be needed to have useful
reviews before edit.

GitHub (or Gitlab or other equivalent)
would be better match for such requirements.___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 11 September 2019, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
>
> Nearly 100% of my activity on wiki
> is attempting to do this (documenting
> tags and removal of what is in contrary to
> reality).

Yes, and you are not the only one who tries that.  But the bottom line 
is that this would only work in turning the wiki into an accurate 
documentation of the de facto meaning of tags if the number of edits 
and the time spent on these by those willing and able to diligently 
pursue this path outnumbered edits of those who pursue other goals by a 
fair margin.  This is not achievable i think.

And even if that worked it would still not produce the compact, well 
condensed kind of documentation Richard has in mind of course.

>
> wiki has version management and
> talk pages.
>
> editorial review equivalent is done via watchlists

No, with editorial review i mean advance review before edits make it to 
the version that is primarily used by consumers.

The function of such review would be twofold:  As quality control and to 
shift the incentive to participate in the whole thing towards the more 
qualified contributors.

Wikipedia has been experimenting with a system of this kind imposed on 
top of the Mediawiki framework - but practically this is AFAIK used for 
technocratic oversight to avoid vandalism and other clearly malicious 
changes but not for editorial review regarding content quality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reviewing_pending_changes

I have not actually tried the technical implementation of this but given 
how it is used i doubt it would be suitable for the kind of content 
centered editorial review we are talking about here.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Mateusz Konieczny]

11 Sep 2019, 18:56 by frede...@remote.org:
> and it is very ahrd to do collectively in a "everyone just edits one
> tiny little bit and somehow a coherent whole will emerge" kind of way.
>
Very hard, but given that there is no
better alternative...

Is there somewhere git repository accepting
pull requests - or equivalent of something like
that with contents of this book?___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Mateusz Konieczny]

11 Sep 2019, 13:43 by o...@imagico.de:

> On Wednesday 11 September 2019, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
>>
>> The main thing we're missing is curated, simple information on the
>> main tags that are _used_.
>>
>
> Indeed.  And i would go even further:  Any documentation of the de facto 
> use of tags written by humans (i.e. that goes beyond automatic analysis 
> like taginfo), written and maintained in a way that ensures it actually 
> does document the de facto situation, would be immensely useful and 
> important
>
Nearly 100% of my activity on wiki
is attempting to do this (documenting
tags and removal of what is in contrary to
reality).
>> It needs an
>> editor/curator/whatever, to have clear editorial guidelines, and
>> probably to run on the pull request model rather than open editing.
>>
>
> Is there any mature and writer centric software that implements this 
> kind of model?  I mean that from the perspective of a documentation 
> author offers a wiki like functionality with decent preview and 
> formatting but at the same time comes with a kind of version management 
> and functions to facilitate editorial review and discussion.
>
wiki has version management and
talk pages.

editorial review equivalent is done via watchlists

MediaWiki software and OSM Wiki
community has plenty of warts
but I am unaware about real alternatives,
and I am not planning to make one.___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 11.09.19 17:27, Christoph Hormann wrote:
> My concern is less that of centralized 
> decision making and control over an important resource but that it will 
> be difficult to find, motivate, select and retain qualified people to 
> work on this.

Jochen and I, authors of the 2010 printed OpenStreetMap book, have
unsuccessfully tried to morph that book into some kind of open source
project; we were contacted by different people over time who wanted to
have a go at and we played along it but it never came to a point where
there was any hope of it becoming a sustainable project.

Of course that book went far beyond just tagging, attempting to also
document how various editors work and how to make maps. I've kind of
lost hope that anything could ever become of that - it's a lot of work
and it is very ahrd to do collectively in a "everyone just edits one
tiny little bit and somehow a coherent whole will emerge" kind of way.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Richard Fairhurst]

Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
> Changing to a github-like system of version management would 
> require some people to serve as "maintainers" or "moderators" 
> of the new, curated list of Map Features / Tags, wouldn't it? While 
> this could be an improvement in the quality and consistency of 
> how decisions are made, it would also limit participation and 
> centralize decision-making.

You misunderstand. I'm not proposing "changing to" anything, but rather,
providing an _additional_ source of edited/curated documentation. The wiki
would continue doing what the wiki does. Same principle as switch2osm.

Richard




--
Sent from: http://gis.19327.n8.nabble.com/General-Discussion-f5171242.html

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 11 September 2019, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
>
> Changing to a github-like system of version management would require
> some people to serve as "maintainers" or "moderators" of the new,
> curated list of Map Features / Tags, wouldn't it? While this could be
> an improvement in the quality and consistency of how decisions are
> made, it would also limit participation and centralize
> decision-making.

I think we all realize that and i am not in any way a fan of formalized 
power structures and hierarchies.  But we also can see that the wiki 
does not work as a means to document the de facto meaning of tags.

OpenStreetMap is a broad community of people with very different 
abilities and skills.  Not everyone is equally capable for every task 
within the project and hardly anyone is able to accurately assess their 
level of capability on everything and selflessly act accordingly.  In 
the field of mapping the do-ocratic approach has been relatively 
successful in dealing with that (as long as we were talking about 
independent and unpaid local mappers only of course) because it is the 
base level of the project and is naturally grounded in the locally 
observable reality.  But as i pointed out in my diary entry the same 
approach will not work on the meta-level of tag documentation where - 
if the documentation serves its purpose - what is written or modified 
by a single contributor is multiplied in effect and read and considered 
by many who use the documentation.  This distorts the incentives and 
put bluntly leads to the wrong people dominating the wiki.  And this is 
not solved by getting more prople involved in editing it.  The 
community as a whole tries to compensate for that by giving less weight 
to the wiki as a source of information on tags but as Richard mentioned 
this leaves a big gap in terms of accurate, clear and precise 
documentation.

Note curated documentation based on agreed on editorial principles does 
not necessarily mean a top-down imposed framework.  Such documentation 
would naturally be under an open license and therefore could be forked 
so if someone at some point is dissatisfied with how this works they 
could always initiate a competing project with a different curating 
team and/or principles.  My concern is less that of centralized 
decision making and control over an important resource but that it will 
be difficult to find, motivate, select and retain qualified people to 
work on this.

And documentation of the de facto meaning of tags, potentially focused 
on the most important ones, is of course - though evidently important - 
only one aspect of what Roland wants to discuss here.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

Am Mi., 11. Sept. 2019 um 14:30 Uhr schrieb Joseph Eisenberg <
joseph.eisenb...@gmail.com>:

>  Perhaps the current wiki-based system is
> fine, as long as enough people are invested in maintaining it.
>
>

+1
Btw, sometimes tiny details can make huge differences. Some years ago, the
default action to automatically watch a wiki page when you modified it, was
activated, and since then I'm monitoring changes to the pages I care about.
Since this setting was introduced/changed, more eyes are on the pages (but
it isn't helping for problematic new pages, naturally, I guess there are
similar streams for new pages, and I hope some people are having an eye on
these, but I'm not sure).



> It might be helpful to agree that Tag: and Key: pages on the
> Openstreetmap wiki should document "de facto", actual mapping practice
> rather than what a particular person thinks should be done - this
> being reserved for Proposal pages.
>


yes, although it is hard to tell, often, because when you go checking some
instances, ideally you need to know the "thing" that is represented, so
everybody will have a very limited view of very few examples she personally
knows.
And it is also clear that there will always be some outliers. When you
discover them, you can either change the docs to include them, or you can
remap them to more appropriate tags ;-) If we go always with the first
solution, we will end up in the long run with all tags meaning everything
(or nothing) ;-).

Cheers,
Martin
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Joseph Eisenberg]

"curated, simple information on themain tags that are _used_"

Originally this was maintained at Map Features
(http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features), and this page is
still somewhat "curated"; not just any tag can be added, most of the
very common tags are included, and many people are watching the page
for changes

But this is a wiki page, so sometimes rare or proposed tags are added
without discussion. I've removed a few of these over the past few
months. In theory new tags should be added either because they are
already "de facto" accepted, as shown by frequent use in many places
mappers, and support by database users, but tags can also be added to
Map Features through the Proposal Process with discussion on the
mailing list and wiki.

Changing to a github-like system of version management would require
some people to serve as "maintainers" or "moderators" of the new,
curated list of Map Features / Tags, wouldn't it? While this could be
an improvement in the quality and consistency of how decisions are
made, it would also limit participation and centralize
decision-making.

I've recently tried to start discussions about how new tags should be
added to Map Features and have asked specifically about adding some
"in use" / "de facto" tags. Perhaps the current wiki-based system is
fine, as long as enough people are invested in maintaining it.

It might be helpful to agree that Tag: and Key: pages on the
Openstreetmap wiki should document "de facto", actual mapping practice
rather than what a particular person thinks should be done - this
being reserved for Proposal pages.

- Joseph

On 9/11/19, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 September 2019, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>>
>> The main thing we're missing is curated, simple information on the
>> main tags that are _used_.
>
> Indeed.  And i would go even further:  Any documentation of the de facto
> use of tags written by humans (i.e. that goes beyond automatic analysis
> like taginfo), written and maintained in a way that ensures it actually
> does document the de facto situation, would be immensely useful and
> important.
>
>> It needs an
>> editor/curator/whatever, to have clear editorial guidelines, and
>> probably to run on the pull request model rather than open editing.
>
> Is there any mature and writer centric software that implements this
> kind of model?  I mean that from the perspective of a documentation
> author offers a wiki like functionality with decent preview and
> formatting but at the same time comes with a kind of version management
> and functions to facilitate editorial review and discussion.
>
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
>
> ___
> talk mailing list
> talk@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 11 September 2019, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
> The main thing we're missing is curated, simple information on the
> main tags that are _used_.

Indeed.  And i would go even further:  Any documentation of the de facto 
use of tags written by humans (i.e. that goes beyond automatic analysis 
like taginfo), written and maintained in a way that ensures it actually 
does document the de facto situation, would be immensely useful and 
important.

> It needs an
> editor/curator/whatever, to have clear editorial guidelines, and
> probably to run on the pull request model rather than open editing.

Is there any mature and writer centric software that implements this 
kind of model?  I mean that from the perspective of a documentation 
author offers a wiki like functionality with decent preview and 
formatting but at the same time comes with a kind of version management 
and functions to facilitate editorial review and discussion.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Richard Fairhurst]

Roland Olbricht wrote:
> Imperfect Flow of Information
>
> Although many parts of the OpenStreetMap project are well 
> translated, the tagging documentation has substantial deficiencies.

Yep. Documentation is the biggest problem with tagging.

I don't actually think it's the wiki per se that's the issue. The wiki is...
wiki-like. It's an untidy encyclopaedia of people's preoccupations at the
time they were moved to edit it. Yes, it does have problems: as you say,
"tag definitions being changed after the tag is in widespread use" (remember
the infamous edit that added access=no as a default for all barrier=
values?). But the challenge is bigger than that.

The main thing we're missing is curated, simple information on the main tags
that are _used_. Just as switch2osm took the infinite pages of install docs
on the wiki and boiled them down to one how-to, we need a simple guide to
the common tags in OSM: if you are a data consumer, these are the tags you
need to understand. Wikis don't work for this. It needs an
editor/curator/whatever, to have clear editorial guidelines, and probably to
run on the pull request model rather than open editing.

We're also missing a single-page explanation of OSM tagging principles. One
of the frustrations of watching this list is that there are quite a lot of
plain bad proposals that betray a misunderstanding of basic principles
(verifiability, rich meaningful tags, optimise for the mapper, no-one is
obliged to parse your new tag, etc. etc.). Life is too short to explain this
to everyone and, to be honest, the uber-keen tag proposer doesn't want to
hear their proposal rubbished in the first five minutes so won't listen
anyway. Writing down "this is how OSM tags work" would solve a lot of this
heartache.

Richard



--
Sent from: http://gis.19327.n8.nabble.com/General-Discussion-f5171242.html

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Simon Poole]

Thanks.

BTW I'm not saying that it is always clear when a "good idea" is
actually controversial or that you and Quincy are not subject to
multiple forces pulling or pushing in opposite directions, but the only
solution can be to escalate such issues to a wider audience before
implementation, when that is or becomes clear. Widely harmless current
example: 
https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/6836#issuecomment-529988108

Am 10.09.2019 um 17:12 schrieb Bryan Housel:
>>>
>>> The decisions we make in iD with the tags are mostly because 1.
>>> someone asked us to in a ticket or pull request, and we try to give
>>> people what they want..  or 2. we are trying to solve an actual
>>> problem - for example, the explicit tagging of piers and platforms
>>> came from us trying to detect routing islands (we rolled this back
>>> when people complained).  
>> Well that is a -slight- simplification of what happened. We can
>> partially follow it here
>> https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/6409#issuecomment-494888256
>> Except that we don't even know why in the end the changes were reverted,
>> insight? External pressure? Or what? Obviously it wasn't just people
>> complaining or else it would have been far earlier.
>
> I said why here:
> https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/2267
>
>



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Bryan Housel]

>> 
>> The decisions we make in iD with the tags are mostly because 1. someone 
>> asked us to in a ticket or pull request, and we try to give people what they 
>> want..  or 2. we are trying to solve an actual problem - for example, the 
>> explicit tagging of piers and platforms came from us trying to detect 
>> routing islands (we rolled this back when people complained).  
> Well that is a -slight- simplification of what happened. We can
> partially follow it here
> https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/6409#issuecomment-494888256
> Except that we don't even know why in the end the changes were reverted,
> insight? External pressure? Or what? Obviously it wasn't just people
> complaining or else it would have been far earlier.

I said why here:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/2267 



___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Simon Poole]

Am 10.09.2019 um 16:08 schrieb Bryan Housel:
> Simon you’re completely wrong about this, but I doubt there is anything that 
> I can say that would change your mind.  The "US-corporate bubble" does not 
> care about the tags used by the iD presets as much as you think they do.  

I don't think I remotely implied that the actual tags were at question
in this case.

>
> The decisions we make in iD with the tags are mostly because 1. someone asked 
> us to in a ticket or pull request, and we try to give people what they want.. 
>  or 2. we are trying to solve an actual problem - for example, the explicit 
> tagging of piers and platforms came from us trying to detect routing islands 
> (we rolled this back when people complained).  
Well that is a -slight- simplification of what happened. We can
partially follow it here
https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/6409#issuecomment-494888256
Except that we don't even know why in the end the changes were reverted,
insight? External pressure? Or what? Obviously it wasn't just people
complaining or else it would have been far earlier.
>
> Anyway, good luck with tagging.  When you frame the discussion this way, 
> don’t be surprised when we are reluctant to participate.

If there was more upfront transparency and discussion then likely the
whole thing likely wouldn't be needed. I'm not saying there wouldn't be
any disagreement, but it would be centred around the actual changes and
not around your behaviour which is what in the end is causing the high
tension.

Simon

>
> Bryan
>
>
>
>> On Sep 10, 2019, at 9:55 AM, Simon Poole  wrote:
>>
>> Roland
>>
>> I can't help noticing that you are tiptoeing a bit around the actual
>> issue which started the whole discussion: unilateral changes by the iD
>> maintainers (everybody else doesn't have enough leverage to enforce
>> their position, so it is not me specifically picking on them, it is
>> simply a consequence of the power they can wield). And these changes are
>> not just questions of which tags to use, but far more fundamental
>> questions, for example implicit vs. explicit tagging (which seems to be
>> something the US-corporate bubble whispered to them, likely that unknown
>> organisations holding the purse strings).
>>
>> If you don't address that I'm not quite sure what the point of the whole
>> discussion is.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>> Am 10.09.2019 um 06:50 schrieb Roland Olbricht:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have got into the duty to talk about tagging governance on the SotM
>>> and I would like to develop that opportunity towards something that is
>>> rather helpful in the long term.
>>> To ensure that I am on the right track and not unintentionally after a
>>> personal agenda I would like to ask you to comment on the findings so
>>> far listed below.
>>>
>>> To encourage a widespread discussion, I have spread this message on
>>> German and French lists as well (these two because I understand the
>>> languages) and will do so in addition on the tagging list. Feel free to
>>> spread this message further as long as you remember to channel back all
>>> feedback.
>>>
>>>
>>> Imperfect Flow of Information
>>>
>>> Although many parts of the OpenStreetMap project are well translated,
>>> the tagging documentation has substantial deficiencies. Over a random
>>> sample of 10 tags the number of declared languages varies between 2 and
>>> 18, but only few are complete and up to date (sample: 2 of 10 for
>>> German, 3 of 10 for French).
>>>
>>> Another kind of imperfect information flow is that tag definitions can
>>> be changed on the wiki page long after the tag is in widespread use.
>>>
>>> The converse case that a tag is introduced without any documentation is
>>> also happening. While this happens by ordinary users usually slow enough
>>> to make sense of the added data, an import or organized edit might be
>>> able to substantially skew the de facto meaning of a tag, regardless
>>> whether it is in widespread use, documented, both, or none.
>>>
>>>
>>> More Structure needed
>>>
>>> The translation issues have been conflated with a different problem:
>>> Different features may look very different between regions. E.g.
>>> highway=primary and highway=unclassfied versus highway=track
>>> need different sets of examples in Germany and the urban US on the one
>>> hand and Iceland or rural Africa on the other. It is easy to mix this
>>> with the translation into the predominant language in the area,
>>> but the tagging challenges in Belgium, Canada, and Niger are
>>> substantially different, although all three countries happen to have
>>> French as official language. Conversely, there is no sane reason to
>>> change tagging rules every block of houses in Brussels.
>>>
>>> Additionally, people often have different search terms than the British
>>> English tag names or their translations, and the wiki search engine is
>>> infamous for its bad performance. Having explicit keywords to direct the
>>> attention of a mapper to the list of 

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Bryan Housel]

Simon you’re completely wrong about this, but I doubt there is anything that I 
can say that would change your mind.  The "US-corporate bubble" does not care 
about the tags used by the iD presets as much as you think they do.  

The decisions we make in iD with the tags are mostly because 1. someone asked 
us to in a ticket or pull request, and we try to give people what they want..  
or 2. we are trying to solve an actual problem - for example, the explicit 
tagging of piers and platforms came from us trying to detect routing islands 
(we rolled this back when people complained).  

Anyway, good luck with tagging.  When you frame the discussion this way, don’t 
be surprised when we are reluctant to participate.

Bryan



> On Sep 10, 2019, at 9:55 AM, Simon Poole  wrote:
> 
> Roland
> 
> I can't help noticing that you are tiptoeing a bit around the actual
> issue which started the whole discussion: unilateral changes by the iD
> maintainers (everybody else doesn't have enough leverage to enforce
> their position, so it is not me specifically picking on them, it is
> simply a consequence of the power they can wield). And these changes are
> not just questions of which tags to use, but far more fundamental
> questions, for example implicit vs. explicit tagging (which seems to be
> something the US-corporate bubble whispered to them, likely that unknown
> organisations holding the purse strings).
> 
> If you don't address that I'm not quite sure what the point of the whole
> discussion is.
> 
> Simon
> 
> Am 10.09.2019 um 06:50 schrieb Roland Olbricht:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I have got into the duty to talk about tagging governance on the SotM
>> and I would like to develop that opportunity towards something that is
>> rather helpful in the long term.
>> To ensure that I am on the right track and not unintentionally after a
>> personal agenda I would like to ask you to comment on the findings so
>> far listed below.
>> 
>> To encourage a widespread discussion, I have spread this message on
>> German and French lists as well (these two because I understand the
>> languages) and will do so in addition on the tagging list. Feel free to
>> spread this message further as long as you remember to channel back all
>> feedback.
>> 
>> 
>> Imperfect Flow of Information
>> 
>> Although many parts of the OpenStreetMap project are well translated,
>> the tagging documentation has substantial deficiencies. Over a random
>> sample of 10 tags the number of declared languages varies between 2 and
>> 18, but only few are complete and up to date (sample: 2 of 10 for
>> German, 3 of 10 for French).
>> 
>> Another kind of imperfect information flow is that tag definitions can
>> be changed on the wiki page long after the tag is in widespread use.
>> 
>> The converse case that a tag is introduced without any documentation is
>> also happening. While this happens by ordinary users usually slow enough
>> to make sense of the added data, an import or organized edit might be
>> able to substantially skew the de facto meaning of a tag, regardless
>> whether it is in widespread use, documented, both, or none.
>> 
>> 
>> More Structure needed
>> 
>> The translation issues have been conflated with a different problem:
>> Different features may look very different between regions. E.g.
>> highway=primary and highway=unclassfied versus highway=track
>> need different sets of examples in Germany and the urban US on the one
>> hand and Iceland or rural Africa on the other. It is easy to mix this
>> with the translation into the predominant language in the area,
>> but the tagging challenges in Belgium, Canada, and Niger are
>> substantially different, although all three countries happen to have
>> French as official language. Conversely, there is no sane reason to
>> change tagging rules every block of houses in Brussels.
>> 
>> Additionally, people often have different search terms than the British
>> English tag names or their translations, and the wiki search engine is
>> infamous for its bad performance. Having explicit keywords to direct the
>> attention of a mapper to the list of possibly fitting tags might help.
>> 
>> A substantial problem source of the concept of proposals is
>> that it interacts with lots of tags in a nontrivial way and is
>> practically never properly applied to all affected tag definitions.
>> A proposal currently is an extra page although it should have much more
>> an impact like a Git commit, grouping changes across various tag
>> definition pages in a single changeset.
>> 
>> 
>> Legitimacy and Governance
>> 
>> What legitimation has a process if only a handful of people have that
>> have the time to write mails on a mailing list and to write wiki pages
>> are involved? In particular, if the proposals end up as being full of
>> contradictions or vague terms and leave necessary answers undefined.
>> Yet these still are the people that have shown the necessary long-term
>> endurance to assure maintenance and that 

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Simon Poole]

Roland

I can't help noticing that you are tiptoeing a bit around the actual
issue which started the whole discussion: unilateral changes by the iD
maintainers (everybody else doesn't have enough leverage to enforce
their position, so it is not me specifically picking on them, it is
simply a consequence of the power they can wield). And these changes are
not just questions of which tags to use, but far more fundamental
questions, for example implicit vs. explicit tagging (which seems to be
something the US-corporate bubble whispered to them, likely that unknown
organisations holding the purse strings).

If you don't address that I'm not quite sure what the point of the whole
discussion is.

Simon

Am 10.09.2019 um 06:50 schrieb Roland Olbricht:
> Hi all,
>
> I have got into the duty to talk about tagging governance on the SotM
> and I would like to develop that opportunity towards something that is
> rather helpful in the long term.
> To ensure that I am on the right track and not unintentionally after a
> personal agenda I would like to ask you to comment on the findings so
> far listed below.
>
> To encourage a widespread discussion, I have spread this message on
> German and French lists as well (these two because I understand the
> languages) and will do so in addition on the tagging list. Feel free to
> spread this message further as long as you remember to channel back all
> feedback.
>
>
> Imperfect Flow of Information
>
> Although many parts of the OpenStreetMap project are well translated,
> the tagging documentation has substantial deficiencies. Over a random
> sample of 10 tags the number of declared languages varies between 2 and
> 18, but only few are complete and up to date (sample: 2 of 10 for
> German, 3 of 10 for French).
>
> Another kind of imperfect information flow is that tag definitions can
> be changed on the wiki page long after the tag is in widespread use.
>
> The converse case that a tag is introduced without any documentation is
> also happening. While this happens by ordinary users usually slow enough
> to make sense of the added data, an import or organized edit might be
> able to substantially skew the de facto meaning of a tag, regardless
> whether it is in widespread use, documented, both, or none.
>
>
> More Structure needed
>
> The translation issues have been conflated with a different problem:
> Different features may look very different between regions. E.g.
> highway=primary and highway=unclassfied versus highway=track
> need different sets of examples in Germany and the urban US on the one
> hand and Iceland or rural Africa on the other. It is easy to mix this
> with the translation into the predominant language in the area,
> but the tagging challenges in Belgium, Canada, and Niger are
> substantially different, although all three countries happen to have
> French as official language. Conversely, there is no sane reason to
> change tagging rules every block of houses in Brussels.
>
> Additionally, people often have different search terms than the British
> English tag names or their translations, and the wiki search engine is
> infamous for its bad performance. Having explicit keywords to direct the
> attention of a mapper to the list of possibly fitting tags might help.
>
> A substantial problem source of the concept of proposals is
> that it interacts with lots of tags in a nontrivial way and is
> practically never properly applied to all affected tag definitions.
> A proposal currently is an extra page although it should have much more
> an impact like a Git commit, grouping changes across various tag
> definition pages in a single changeset.
>
>
> Legitimacy and Governance
>
> What legitimation has a process if only a handful of people have that
> have the time to write mails on a mailing list and to write wiki pages
> are involved? In particular, if the proposals end up as being full of
> contradictions or vague terms and leave necessary answers undefined.
> Yet these still are the people that have shown the necessary long-term
> endurance to assure maintenance and that do the work. Thus every change
> to replace processes with better processes must be geared towards
> broadening not narrowing the base of long-term maintainers.
>
> Conversely, I fully understand mappers that are wary of sudden changes
> in the rendering or the access to tags in edting software. A lot of
> people whould probably appreciate to better understand what happens on
> the way from a tag discussion to a final change in the renderer or
> editing software. These processes are not secret, but often
> under-documented.
>
> Again, the various discussion channels and the lacking information flow
> between them contribute to the bad mood. Even worse, the ratio between
> people and channels means that evil or just plainly incompetent people
> could easily take over some channels and contribute substantially to the
> confusion. Good ideas how to redirect people and close down some of the
> 

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[john whelan]

If the discussion takes place in a mailing list there is a record of it.

Slack is restricted and I'm not certain if a record is available.  Same for
chat or mumble discussions.  Both are valuable but not for formally
recording why a decision was made and the reasons behind it.

Cheerio John

On Tue, Sep 10, 2019, 6:54 AM Valor Naram,  wrote:

> Hello Roland and other "talkers",
>
> I also thought about creating a new better channel for tagging discussions
> where all sites (mappers (newbies, experienced), developers, researchers
> etc.) come into play. E.g. we could create IRC rooms for discussions for
> each tag and have one main IRC room where one can "advertise" for a tag
> discussion in an IRC room. Votes can still take place in the wiki. But this
> would just solve one of many OSM issues.
>
>
> I also mentioned in "tagging" the problem of "multiple tags for one
> purpose" but the emerging discussion there was not kind of discussion I
> hoped for. I also think that Mailing list isn't the right format for
> discussions. I think a chat is better suited for discussions. Telegram
> groups like @osm_de show that it can work throw chatting.
>
> Cheers
>
> Sören Reinecke alias Valor Naram
>
>
>  Original Message 
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance
> From: Christoph Hormann
> To: talk@openstreetmap.org
> CC:
>
>
>
> Hello Roland,
>
> not sure if you have seen - i already gave my initial thoughts on this
> on
>
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/imagico/diary/390599
>
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
>
> ___
> talk mailing list
> talk@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
> ___
> talk mailing list
> talk@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Valor Naram]

Hello Roland and other "talkers",I also thought about creating a new better channel for tagging discussions where all sites (mappers (newbies, experienced), developers, researchers etc.)  come into play. E.g. we could create IRC rooms for discussions for each tag and have one main IRC room where one can "advertise" for a tag discussion in an IRC room. Votes can still take place in the wiki. But this would just solve one of many OSM issues.I also mentioned in "tagging" the problem of "multiple tags for one purpose" but the emerging discussion there was not kind of discussion I hoped for. I also think that Mailing list isn't the right format for discussions. I think a chat is better suited for discussions. Telegram groups like @osm_de show that it can work throw chatting.CheersSören Reinecke alias Valor Naram Original Message Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging GovernanceFrom: Christoph Hormann To: talk@openstreetmap.orgCC: Hello Roland,not sure if you have seen - i already gave my initial thoughts on this onhttps://www.openstreetmap.org/user/imagico/diary/390599-- Christoph Hormannhttp://www.imagico.de/___talk mailing listtalk@openstreetmap.orghttps://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Christoph Hormann]

Hello Roland,

not sure if you have seen - i already gave my initial thoughts on this 
on

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/imagico/diary/390599

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[stevea]

My zwei Pfennige (two cents) worth.  I am somewhat multilingual (in my context 
of a largely-monolingual USA):  I grew up hearing familial Polish and 
Hungarian, studied seven years of foreign language (Spanish and French) in 
middle and high schools and at university double majored in linguistics and 
computer science.  In the '90s I was an employee at Apple and Adobe in 
multilingual environments, helping to either translate or "localize" software, 
data or documentation in many, many contexts.  When I signed up for OSM over a 
decade ago, I did so with a passion knowing I was joining a worldwide community 
of many languages:  a truly global project.  I have written many wiki pages and 
done much mapping, mostly local (California, USA), though I travel and map 
around the world, too.

I am aware of some of the history of OSM's origin story in the UK, and its 
almost unbelievably enthusiastic adoption in Western Europe, especially 
Germany, BeNeLux countries (do people still say that?!) and around the world.  
(I am especially heartened to see similar enthusiasm in Africa and Asia:  OSM 
is truly global).

Yes, as I read (and write) wiki, wanting to conscientiously bridge the "how do 
we? / how should we?" gaps in the map compared to how we actually DO map by 
contributing to wiki, I have noticed a distinct English-centrism in the wiki.  
At first I attributed this to OSM's UK origins (and British English still 
prevails in tagging, it is helpful to know the reasons why) yet I also noticed 
there was a "chase" or "lag" in both wiki-as-documenting how we DO tag and 
wiki-as-documenting how we SHOULD tag (the so-called "descriptive vs. 
prescriptive" argument about what a wiki page is actually "documenting").  At 
the same time, German-speaking influences have come on strong, showing the deep 
passion for OSM in this part of the world.

Roland mentions an "Imperfect Flow of Information."  What I notice in this 
regard is that people often map without checking wiki, people sometimes write 
wiki without checking the map, and people who either read or write wiki seem to 
be in a distinct minority.  I have no "basis in fact" for saying the latter, 
but I have had much experience in OSM of people who want to map well, they have 
all the required enthusiasm to be excellent mappers, but they seem to abhor 
reading documentation (our wiki, to a large extent it IS our project-wide 
documentation of "how we do things").  A lot of "wheels have been invented" (as 
in the phrase "don't re-invent the wheel (as you don't have to)" and yet people 
see fit to invent their own (wheels) tagging standards, when all that would 
have been required is a five-minutes tour through some fairly-well-written wiki 
pages.  While a certain amount of this is "Goldilocks, 'just right'" (and we 
have votes and talk-discussions and questions-and-answers on our forum and 
local MeetUp groups where beers are drunk and several people all agree "that's 
a pretty good way to tag that!") we sometimes see our "plastic" (free-form) 
tagging taken too far.  Or, people are quick to put their own interpretation on 
things, when the community has already reached consensus, and this is 
documented in our wiki pages.

But coining new tags and spilling them all over the map isn't the major "abuse" 
that I see, it is merely a symptom.  The real "sickness" that seems to continue 
to plague OSM is the very great difficulty it seems to take to reach wide, 
often world-wide agreement.  We have MANY different forums / technologies / 
websites /  chat rooms to discuss, we have MANY different views, we have many 
agendas (whether hidden or open), we have (and use!) MANY methods for "playing 
nice" vs. "being rough" for advancing these ideas "into the map."  Now, most of 
us realize that what we're talking about here, achieving consensus (especially 
on the specifics of tagging) in a worldwide map, in a worldwide community, is 
and is going to be difficult.  I see no way around that.  Yet I am encouraged 
that Roland brings up these topics and at least initiates a wider discussion 
that there MUST be "ways forward" through what feels like a morass of poor 
communication, what is known as "stovepiped" information (very 
compartmentalized, or paid attention to by people who make it their business to 
watch certain highly-specialized aspects of the project) and many other 
problems plaguing OSM.  It isn't simply many languages, esoterica, data vs. 
code, the cacophony of all the various communication methods (including 
proprietary ones like Twitter, Slack and other "secret sauce walkie talkies" 
that require signing a contract to use them, which deserve no good place in an 
"open" project like OSM, in my opinion).  No, it is as Roland says, "More 
Structure needed."  I don't know where the sweet spot between "free form" and 
"More Structured" is, but we're on a path where we are devolving into "too 
little structure" and it seems to be hurting us.  How do we BUILD 

[OSM-talk] Tagging Governance

[Roland Olbricht]

Hi all,

I have got into the duty to talk about tagging governance on the SotM
and I would like to develop that opportunity towards something that is
rather helpful in the long term.
To ensure that I am on the right track and not unintentionally after a
personal agenda I would like to ask you to comment on the findings so
far listed below.

To encourage a widespread discussion, I have spread this message on
German and French lists as well (these two because I understand the
languages) and will do so in addition on the tagging list. Feel free to
spread this message further as long as you remember to channel back all
feedback.


Imperfect Flow of Information

Although many parts of the OpenStreetMap project are well translated,
the tagging documentation has substantial deficiencies. Over a random
sample of 10 tags the number of declared languages varies between 2 and
18, but only few are complete and up to date (sample: 2 of 10 for
German, 3 of 10 for French).

Another kind of imperfect information flow is that tag definitions can
be changed on the wiki page long after the tag is in widespread use.

The converse case that a tag is introduced without any documentation is
also happening. While this happens by ordinary users usually slow enough
to make sense of the added data, an import or organized edit might be
able to substantially skew the de facto meaning of a tag, regardless
whether it is in widespread use, documented, both, or none.


More Structure needed

The translation issues have been conflated with a different problem:
Different features may look very different between regions. E.g.
highway=primary and highway=unclassfied versus highway=track
need different sets of examples in Germany and the urban US on the one
hand and Iceland or rural Africa on the other. It is easy to mix this
with the translation into the predominant language in the area,
but the tagging challenges in Belgium, Canada, and Niger are
substantially different, although all three countries happen to have
French as official language. Conversely, there is no sane reason to
change tagging rules every block of houses in Brussels.

Additionally, people often have different search terms than the British
English tag names or their translations, and the wiki search engine is
infamous for its bad performance. Having explicit keywords to direct the
attention of a mapper to the list of possibly fitting tags might help.

A substantial problem source of the concept of proposals is
that it interacts with lots of tags in a nontrivial way and is
practically never properly applied to all affected tag definitions.
A proposal currently is an extra page although it should have much more
an impact like a Git commit, grouping changes across various tag
definition pages in a single changeset.


Legitimacy and Governance

What legitimation has a process if only a handful of people have that
have the time to write mails on a mailing list and to write wiki pages
are involved? In particular, if the proposals end up as being full of
contradictions or vague terms and leave necessary answers undefined.
Yet these still are the people that have shown the necessary long-term
endurance to assure maintenance and that do the work. Thus every change
to replace processes with better processes must be geared towards
broadening not narrowing the base of long-term maintainers.

Conversely, I fully understand mappers that are wary of sudden changes
in the rendering or the access to tags in edting software. A lot of
people whould probably appreciate to better understand what happens on
the way from a tag discussion to a final change in the renderer or
editing software. These processes are not secret, but often
under-documented.

Again, the various discussion channels and the lacking information flow
between them contribute to the bad mood. Even worse, the ratio between
people and channels means that evil or just plainly incompetent people
could easily take over some channels and contribute substantially to the
confusion. Good ideas how to redirect people and close down some of the
channels (e.g. wiki discussion pages) might be worth pursuing. On top of
that the wiki history is so much less helpful than what developers are
nowadays used to from version control systems that borrowing methaphors
and paradigms from there to the tag documentation is worth consideration.

This hopefully helps to foster that the authors of the documentation and
the mappers using a tag actually agree on its meaning.


Best regards,

Roland

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk